


Incunabula

by kormantic



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, Libraries, Magic, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:06:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kormantic/pseuds/kormantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet Vane and the Library at Hurtfew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incunabula

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultimaromanorum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimaromanorum/gifts).



There was something that had been hungry in him once, Harriet decided, but no longer—something inward turned outward in his expression, as if a closed room had had the windows unshuttered and the door thrown open for a beloved and much longed-for guest. It was a rather tender look of surprised satisfaction, and she knew the expression because she had seen it in the mirror, not many hours after she had accepted one of Peter’s countless offers of marriage.

The gentleman standing in the library looked both alert and very much at home, although she did not recognize him. This was only her second visit to Hurtfew Abbey, but Bunter had kindly presented her to every member of the household during her previous stay, so perhaps he was new. He was certainly dressed in livery… of a sort. Black, utilitarian, but antiquated. Was he an actor, come to beg subscriptions to the local theater? Then again, he was in the library, and he had about him the air of an agent of business. Perhaps he was delivering a new collection.

He had a look of competence and dry humor that reminded Harriet of Bunter, although he was not so good-looking. His cheek was marred by a long, faint, silvery scar, but his large black eyes gave him a compelling intensity. Indeed, the very air seemed to ripple around him, the way it will shimmer and warp near a furnace.

She disguised a shiver by smoothing the arms of her blouse, and cleared her throat.

“Hello. Are you waiting for my husband?” Harriet asked.

His tender look was replaced with one of scouring interest.

“It is possible I am. Is he a magician?” 

Harriet had to blink at him before responding, “He is a lord and he has just bought this house.” 

“The one with the eyeglass, then,” the fellow said. “Yes. Are you the other one?”

“The other one?”

“The other magician,” he said. He raised one eyebrow, looking expectant and annoyed. It quite put her back up, and she spoke sharply. “I’m sorry, but I have no facility for card tricks or making doves fly from my hat. I am a novelist.”

“A novelist!” His eyes gleamed. “Strange will like that. He says imagination is an advantage to the study.”

“I beg your pardon, but may I ask why you are here?”

“I’m here to unlock the library.”

The library did have a door, but it was standing open, so she crossed her arms.

“Then you have done your duty. Did Bunter hire you?”

“I beg your pardon, madam, but I cannot unlock the library until the one with the eyeglass is here.”

“As I can see very well, the door is quite open, and anyhow the library belongs to _me_.” Harriet wasn’t generally argumentative with strangers, but some insolent spark in his expression kindled something akin to rage in her.

“Does it now,” he said softly, looking at her with a kinder eye.

“It was... It was a Christmas present.” Harriet was annoyed with herself for sounding timid. She should instead have shouted that the library and every other room in the house and the house itself and the grounds around it were hers as well, by the deed she had signed on Christmas Eve in front of Freddy Arbuthnot with Bunter as a witness, but her flare of rage had become a flutter of unease. 

“He’s married you, then. Strange said he would. Was quite insistent about it.” He gave her a considering look. “You are very plain to be married to a rich man. Do you come from money yourself?” 

“You are remarkably rude,” Harriet said, preferring to be angry than afraid.

He grinned at her quite cheerfully. “So I have been told.”

“Harriet, who are you talking to? Have you already made it up to run away with a handsome mountebank and leave me bereft?”

“Peter! This… person says he has come to unlock the library.”

“And so he has.” Peter stared at the gentlemen for some time, and the other man stared calmly back. “I have been waiting for you,” Peter said at last. “You might have come years ago.”

“I did. You were in knee pants and kicked me in the shin.” He didn’t look as though he’d taken it personally.

“I was six,” Peter said vaguely. Harriet began to feel as if she’d woken from a dream. Or into one. The man before her was certainly some years younger than Peter himself.

“You’re not much taller,” the other man remarked.

“And you’re not much older,” Peter replied. “How old _are_ you, after all?”

“I don’t care for twaddle and back and forth. I don’t have time for it, and neither have you.” Harriet supposed it was true that their own meandering conversation had only lasted until Peter had arrived; still, he’d seemed very comfortable _asking_ impudent questions.

“But who is he?” Harriet felt moments from plucking at Peter’s sleeve like a child.

“His name is Childermass.”

Childermass nodded once in affirmation.

Harriet raised an eyebrow at Peter and surveyed Childermass rather skeptically: today was the 28th of December1. Perhaps he was an actor, after all. 

“And what brings you to us on your very own feast day?” she inquired dryly.

Childermass laughed at that, a two note shout that Harriet found strangely relaxing. She felt she had passed some sort of test, and by doing so, had won his regard.

“I am here,” he said again, “to unlock the library.” And he made a little gesture that Harriet could never quite remember afterwards, and… unlocked the library. The room had seemed low and dark and crowded a moment before, and now had a roaring fire that gilded every leather binding with a flickering glow. The ceiling suddenly had (or had always had, and she had somehow simply failed to notice) Gothic arches, and every place she looked, the tall shining bookcases were detailed with wonderful carvings of berries and leaves so lifelike she felt sure she could see woodland animals dart among the ivy and the oak.

“It seems your studies have granted many gifts,” Peter said in a wondering voice.

“There are conveniences, my Lord. And always a share of sacrifice,” he added with hooded eyes, as a man could be heard yelling for gin and hot water somewhere in the room behind him – from where, Harriet could not tell, as she might have sworn the room was empty aside from the three of them. “It looks to me as though some suffer more than others.” He gave Harriet an appraising glance.

Harriet was suddenly in mind of damned souls and infernal contracts, and asked Peter in a hesitant voice aiming to be flip, “And what have _you_ sacrificed, Peter?” 

Knowing that first-born children were a fashionable currency in fairy tales, Harriet felt her lips must be nearly blue with anxiety. She had planned to tell Peter on New Year’s Eve, when she could be certain. 

“I may have given my first love away,” he confessed with studied carelessness. “It is true that I no longer remember her name2,” he said with rather more gravity. His eyes were troubled. 

“Or you might have given your Last Year’s Growth3,” said Childermass with a sardonic look. “You’re a head shorter than His Grace, I should judge.”

Peter, who was tender on the subject, looked as if he should like to speak sharply, but Childermass only continued dismissively, “I would not regret a sixpence traded for a sovereign4.” 

“So he is ready?” asked Peter.

“He believes the need is very great. Strange thinks you have the head and shoulders for it, as long as you have her at hand.” He indicated Harriet with a point of his chin.

“And what do you think?”

“I think you are foolish and vain, like other men.”

“That is not at all promising,” Peter said, as if to himself.

“You remind me of Strange, in fact.” This did not seem to be a compliment, but Harriet could not be sure. “You will not make his mistakes, though, as long as you trust the other one and learn to rely upon her. I am to remind you: _Cette femme te sera un point d’appui_5.” He spoke this last with an indifferent French accent, but it seemed to galvanize Peter. 

“And you, madam. Strange has no advice for you, but the Raven King wishes you well.”

“Do _you_ have advice for me?” Harriet found that she suddenly yearned for his approval, although why that should be, she could not say.

He looked faintly surprised, and regarded her for a long moment before saying, “Do not doubt your own ability.” And then he surprised her in return by bowing, taking her hand, and pressing a brief, dry kiss to her open palm. When he released her, Harriet folded her hand around the kiss as if it were a token, with the strangest sense that she could feel it melting into her skin, like a drop of warm honey, or a coin chipped out of ice, or something somehow both at once.

Standing again, he nodded gravely at them both and then disappeared. Not suddenly; it wasn’t a shock to the eye, it was simply an absence, as if he had never been there to begin with. Her eyes felt sore with blinking, and Peter gently took her arm to steady her.

*

Later, ensconced on a sumptuously comfortable sofa with a hot whiskey and lemon brought to her by a Bunter who seemed quite transformed in the rich glow of the new fireplace, Peter sat down beside her as Bunter stood near at hand, browsing the shelves with a kind of ecstatic restraint.

For some little time, Peter polished his monocle with a linen napkin and stared into the fire, apparently deciding what he wanted to say.

“When I was six, Childermass appeared to me in the library at Denver. He said he had brought me many books, but in the end he gave me only one6. It seems that the Raven King has a queer sense of time, and Childermass had been expecting me to be a man grown. He then assured me that our ghostly relations had had a common hobby, and it would do for me to follow the family passion.”

“A hobby! They’re so partial to the library, was it book collecting?” 

“Yes and no. In life, they had the money and the leisure for scholarly pursuits, and it would seem that their favored study was that of… thaumaturgy.” 

Harriet laughed, her low, rolling true laugh of delight, because of course the ghosts in the library had been _magicians_. It made a certain ridiculous sense.

That Peter looked faintly surprised and even consternated cut her laugh short.

“Thaumaturgy. Peter,” she began, and then trailed away, having no idea whatsoever what to say after that.

“Dear Harriet, it cannot be so great a leap; after all you’ve had tea with Lady Susan twice this week.”

Over the Christmas visit with Peter’s mother, Lady Susan7 had several times offered Harriet steaming cups of fragrant but intangible tea, and seemed content to smile at her in companionable silence for the few minutes before Harriet would inevitably have to glance away, at which time Lady Susan would dematerialize as silently as down from a dandelion and as suddenly as a sneeze. Back at their own stead at Talboys, Mr. Noakes had apparently decided against becoming a shade, which Harriet was glad of, as she’d had no particular fondness for him. She felt quite at home among the spirit denizens of Denver Hall, however. Old Gregory8 was still her favorite, perhaps because he was so polite, and had after all been her first apparition. Uncle Roger took little notice of anyone, always in a hurry to catch a train. And Lady Susan, of course, was a dear friend of the Dowager Duchess, who was forever expressing regret that she could never _quite_ taste that good lady’s no doubt incomparable Darjeeling.

“Yes, but. It is difficult to imagine that Lady Susan is anything separate and apart from the wonders of your ridiculous story-book house, with its peacocks and its deer-parks. This, buying the library at Hurtfew, and telling me it is full of books of magic!” She had a sudden fit of fear that grabbed at her heart with wet hands – surely the strain that Peter had been under had not been so severe that he should lose his reason? Then she cursed herself for a cowardly, weakheaded fool: hadn’t she seen the room transform before her? Childermass had left the room while they’d stared at him, and certainly not by the door. If he was a ghost, he was something new to her experience: besides his ability to speak, his hands had felt entirely material, and his lips warm.

Peter’s face was quite white, and he seemed almost overcome by some sense of dread. Unexpectedly, it was Bunter who spoke next:

“We have called upon the Raven King to help us, my lady.”

The Raven King. She had skipped rope to rhymes about the Raven King as a child: _“This world is all too shallow/it is painted on the sky/and it trembles like the wind-shook rain/when the Raven King goes by.”_ Until she was nearly thirteen she had hoped and feared, with equal fervor, that the Raven King would steal her away to Faerie9 to teach her his arts. After a long moment, Harriet said, overawed, “You intend to use magic to prevent the war.” 

Master and man nodded together, and Peter’s eyes blazed into hers.

“Well, then. What can I do?”

Peter took her face in his hands and whispered, “ _Vous serez l'ange d'Angleterre, tu votre épée flamboyante garderez le monde à distance,_ ”10 before kissing her soundly. They did not attend Bunter’s discreet withdrawal from the room.

*

The next day, having torn through Peter’s copy of Strange’s _The History and Practice of English Magic_ , she felt capable of properly appreciating each treasure now discovered in the Hurtfew library: Lanchester’s _Language of Birds,_ Ormskirk’s _Revelations of Thirty-Six Other Worlds_ and even _How to Putte Questiones to the Dark and understand its Answeres._ There were also folios of the collected letters of Martin Pale, lauded _Aureate_ magician, and those of his lover Francis Pevensey, herself a magician and the author of several important works, including _Eighteen Wonders to be found in the House of Albion_. Pale’s letters were quite passionately poetic and descriptive, whereas Pevensey’s were both highly allusive and cleverly encoded within an intricate system of paper-folding11. 

Not only were magical texts of the _Aureate_ and _Argentine_ ages uncovered, but versions of stories that seemed quite different than she remembered them12 , as well as collections of work that had not yet been written13.

Peter, an expert on incunabula14, was of the opinion that the non-magical works had been collected by Jonathan Strange, as Gilbert Norrell had never demonstrated an inclination to fancy, and had been singleminded in his possession of magical books from his first introduction to the history of magic. Harriet, who had just finished Segundus’s rather lovely _Life of Jonathan Strange_ , was inclined to agree.

*

After another day of voracious reading, with Bunter bringing them all tea before retiring into the stacks himself to judiciously integrate Peter’s own volumes with those of Hurtfew Abbey, Harriet asked Peter if he hadn’t really bought the library for Bunter.

“He’s radiant, Peter. I’ve never seen him so happy!” 

“His education, though hardly formal, is vast and deep. If he and I were different men, I might have married him in your stead,” murmured Peter, kissing her hands. “After all, it was good enough for Gilgamesh15.”

“And I would have applauded your good sense. Bunter is not only clever but exceedingly handsome. If I wasn’t perishing of love for you, I’d be positively pining for him.”

“I shall leave him to you in my will, dear heart. In fact, I’ll fall on my sword this instant if you wish me grant him to you sooner.” 

“You are the loveliest idiot in the world, but you must realize that you can’t go about handing people off to one another as if they were lumps of sugar,” Harriet pronounced fondly, rucking up Peter’s well-ordered barley-corn hair before touching a finger to the ragged spine of a very cracked and aged work.

“Ah! A book of poisons, much thumbed by the Medicis. I bought it for you, actually, as a wedding present. But I feared it wouldn’t set the right tone.” He bore her attempt at a glare with good grace. “Not the oldest but one of the rarest manuscripts in my collection. You _do_ have an eye.” Then he laughed aloud. “Well, let’s not compare golden apples to oranges. Yesterday it was extraordinary; today it is no great shakes, I’m afraid.” He smiled foolishly. “To think, you and I have opened Ali Baba’s cave, and we shall share these treasures with the world and make it anew.”

“You’re an incurable romantic,” Harriet accused, undermining her own reproof by bestowing upon him a lingering kiss. 

Some time later, Harriet smoothed her hair and said, “One of the first things we should do is enlist the help of reasonable people. We will need some argument, and then some agreement. It is unhelpful of Mr. Strange to leave off before explaining _how_ to bring magic back to England, especially when, as near as I can tell, our England never had it to begin with.”

“Shortsighted of the fellow, I heartily agree.” Peter seemed to consider these words and tapped his chin with a forefinger. “Harriet, you’ve a good grasp of history: how many women, not just a queen with an army at hand here or there, but how many _women_ have waged wars?” 

“Joan of Arc did, I suppose. The Amazons, if they existed at all. But I don’t know if they waged war so much as defended themselves from attackers.”

“Quite my point. Tell me, what kind of world would it be, run by women?”

“A sensible one, I should think.” She smiled warmly at Peter. “I suppose we could cast a spell.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Peter, who sounded perfectly serious. He held a book out to her, and she took it: _The Parliament of Women_. “ _Liberté, égalité… sororité_ ,” Peter intoned sagely.

“You do know that there are thousands of women who are just as loathsome as men? Present company excepted.” Peter inclined his head in regal salute.

“Of course there are, but _most_ loathsome women are as stupid as owls, and we must hope they’d be unable to make much of this reading. Besides, I do think that you and I together could name a good many sensible, clever and forthright women between us.”

“I accept your proposal,” said Harriet, and they shook hands gravely. “But Peter, before we invite people to this… whatever it is, I suppose we should decide what it _is_ , and then go about explaining it. I’m afraid nearly everyone but your mother will think us quite mad at first.”

This was undoubtedly true, and so she and Peter put their heads together and called for Bunter’s headpiece as well. 

Daybreak at Hurtfew found Bunter dispatched with Mrs. Merdle and an in-person invitation for every female who had attended their wedding, from the much-adored Dowager Duchess to the incomparable Miss Climpson and the wise Dean of Shrewsbury, save two: Helen, for obvious reasons, and Rachel Arbuthnot née Levy, who was actively expecting her second child, and who could be counted on for a summer session. Peter also extended his hand to an American, who had to make do with a trunk call16. There were many other women of Peter’s acquaintance whom he could not in all solemnity invite to this new salon; to those ladies, notably a copywriter for an advertising agency, a certain sculptor and a Viennese opera singer of some renown, several books were dispatched, along with a letter on heavy stationery adorned with the Wimsey crest and graced with a wax seal17. 

*

EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF HONORIA LUCASTA, DOWAGER DUCHESS OF DENVER,

NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1936

Am just back from the first meeting of the… we haven’t even agreed on what to call it, and the little Dean called it a Shrewsbury Reunion, but that doesn’t seem quite right, not very inclusive, you know, as fully half the class has never set foot in Oxford. It is certainly a class, however, and I am eager to begin my studies! I have in my care three books of MAGIC. That is to say, they are not magical books, but books _about_ magic, but it is all very exciting, even so.

There was a little supper, and we were all re-introduced and then settled in the Gallery at Hurtfew; Peter was leaning on the mantle when Harriet joined us, and the look on his face! He was positively _shining_ with love, and he kissed her hand like a gallant in a painting, and proclaimed the lantern light had turned her handsome red-orange gown into an _oriflamme_. (Oh, he does say such pretty things from time to time. I cannot always be despairing of Paul’s influence, I suppose, although everyone knows he is become a very a wicked old man.) 

They have been married three months, and they still seem positively _dazed_ by happiness, but then again it is entirely possible that they are instead almost all-in with exhaustion, since the entire household, Bunter included, stalwart that he is, dear man, has been awake ‘til all hours _reading_ for an entire week. And the goal of all this scholarship, Harriet informed us in her lovely, deep, grave voice, was that they aim to bring _Magic_ back to England!

It has been only a few days since Bunter came to me with Peter’s letter (very handsomely done, if I may say – if one is receiving an invitation to a society of Magic, it should have a certain panache, and Peter has never been short of style), and of course I wished to reply the instant I had finished reading it, and Bunter kindly waited upon me to write a few hasty lines.

Imagine, a parliament of _women_ , learning to cast spells like Macbeth’s witches, only with much nicer clothes, I should think. If we ever should require a sort of uniform, I would call upon Miss da Costa Green to design it, for even though she is American, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a better eye for tasteful mode of dress; she is very pretty, too, with such remarkable skin and shining eyes. Moreover she is very clever, and Bunter seems to have taken some notice of her, which is, I think, very refreshing, although of course it should break Peter’s heart if Bunter left him to marry. Which is a very silly thing, of course, because Bunter didn’t leave Peter when _he_ married, so I expect they can come to some happy resolution, should it come to a wedding. 

Oh, this day has been so very full of revealing events! If anything could fill my heart more than knowing that my dearest boy has found a deserving and adoring companion to his life, it is that they should be joined together in a task so valiant and original as to train women to fight against _war!_ And not only war, Harriet assured us. Every kind of cruelty and ill use, not only in England, but _everywhere_. All this is really almost overwhelming, and the mere discussion made my heart skip like a stone on a little pond, but there is more to tell!

As the party broke up, and everyone had settled in their various rooms for the evening (Talboys is very charming indeed, but Hurtfew Abbey is quite another splendid thing – it is very nearly of a size with Duke’s Denver!) Harriet came to me: come September, there shall be a new Wimsey in the world! The two of us were quite overcome, and we sniffled through four handkerchiefs laughing and weeping at turns. Oh, women are silly creatures at times, to be sure, but men are just as foolish on their own, and I would tremble to be a man set against such an educated and willful room of lady magicians!

Now to bed – it seems that _Through the Looking Glass_ has been a very good little introduction to reading books of magic – indeed, here is a little script by a Mr. Strange to set you walking on The King’s Roads. To think I might travel the land behind the mirrors! I must remember to bring my nice, sturdy brogues. 

*

“Mervyn Bunter, it would seem. I am here to say that you and I are in service to a King, though you do not know it.”

Bunter would have politely disagreed; in his tin hat, with his rifle laid across his knees, he was most assuredly in the service of George V, but he didn’t feel it merited mention, especially with the gentleman before him handing him a hot mutton pie and a crystal decanter of what seemed to be a very respectable claret. In service, he would have steadily ignored a man offering him pie and wine so plainly stolen from his own master’s cellar, but in time of war, Bunter felt that it was best to be practical.

“You will serve a man who will let you be a man yourself, and that isn’t nothing in this day or any other.” 

“It so happens I’m in need of a new gentleman,” Bunter said, pointing his chin at the corpse beside him, not very fresh. “This one’s quite dead.”

The other man considered the body, his long hair swinging forward to hide the faint scar on his cheek.

“What was he like, then?”

“Randolph Sanderton? He was a little tick,” Bunter allowed, dragging a great lungful of smoke from his fag before letting it out with a sigh. “But I’d known him since he was ten. He was my master’s nephew.”

Childermass (for it was he) nodded, and drew a white handkerchief full of jewel-red strawberries from the satchel he carried, which he set atop the mountainous mutton pie. He gave Bunter’s shoulder a single, companionable pat.

“You will find him when you need to. A raven will tell you how,” and he left as silently as he’d come.

Bunter ate a wedge of pie and three strawberries in a slow, considering way, and then he stowed the remains of his meal and nodded one last time to Sanderton before making his way to a nearby ridge. He surveyed the carnage and the mud, and the few carrion birds hopping with energetic vitality among the dead. Upon a little raised mound not unlike a barrow or a brugh, there was a single raven, calling restively and stooping to peck at the rubble. As Bunter approached, he thought he could hear a man chanting, as if in prayer: “ _Ce monde est peint sur le ciel/Il est trop peu profond/Quand le Roi Corbeau y passe, tout tremble/Comme la pluie au vent."_18

“Well, sir, it seems we’re in a bit of a jam,” Bunter said soothingly. “You hold on and we’ll have you out presently.” With that, he gave a shout and a wave to an ambulance man and two corporals with a stretcher and a ratcatcher who had come to strip the dead of any now-unneeded valuables, and captained a handy rescue, revealing a fair, skinny, hawknosed lad with hair that was almost white, even liberally besmirched with mud and gore. 

“Sergeant,” said the boy, panting lightly with eyes closed against the glare of noon, now uncomfortable to a person who had been recently interred in perfect darkness, “I am much obliged. If there is any service I can render, consider it done. I’m a lord, you know, and rich, so I’m not just talking out of my hat.”

“If you’re in need of a batman, Major, I’m in need of an officer, as mine has most inconveniently died.”

“Perhaps convenience is a matter of opinion, because at this moment I am not sure whether I should be grateful to you or give you a solid clout on the ear for dragging me back. I am leaning toward appreciation, however, and therefore I shall accept your offer. In fact, allow me to add an _addendum infinitus_ : if this bloody thing ever does end, and we leave it on our own two legs, then I extend the invitation to join my service at any time, and for any duration you care to serve. We can negotiate your salary later, but I promise you an excellent bonus at Christmas if you would just find me a sip of water.”

Bunter found it timely to introduce the claret, and the gentleman seemed to find its bouquet alone a ready and invigorating tonic, as he deigned to open his watering eyes to look upon it. 

“You are miracle and man, and I salute you, sir,” said the gentleman, taking a handsome swig from the crystal decanter. 

The corporals with the stretcher bundled him upon it, and the ambulance man buckled him into the truck as tenderly as a father tucks a child into bed. They trundled away, the corporals, Padgett and Hackett, saluted smartly and headed out for their own regiment, and the ratcatcher scratched at his scabrous scalp and dug a toe in the dirt with an air of expectation. Bunter gave him half the remaining meat pie, and the ratcatcher nodded companionably before skulking away to loot those for whom rescue had come too late. Bunter then remembered that he’d lacked the presence of mind to ask the gentleman’s name, nor had he given his own. The idea of service after the war had now become certainly moot19. 

  


* * *

1. December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents for the Church of England, also known as Childermass. Before the reader finds Childermass much given to ornamental dramatics, it should be noted that the spell that delivered Childermass to Harriet’s version of Hurtfew Abbey had been wrought by Jonathan Strange. It needed some link to the passenger, and so Strange had amused himself by assigning that date.↩

2. The young lady in question was one Barbara Penelope Coventry. She was married very happily to a devoted gentleman called James Orrington Waterbury (the name Peter could not remember), who had business interests in the Americas. In 1916, she emigrated with him to Vancouver, Canada and became a rather well thought of landscape artist. As Peter had released her from their engagement prior to joining the army, it is not strange that he should remember her in the context of sacrifice, but his reading should have taught him that magic, when not performed as a favor by a fairy, generally asks nothing of the spell-caster other than ability, and perhaps some allegiance to the Raven King.↩

3. This is assuredly an intended slight to Peter’s vanity. Many young men do not approach their full height until they are twenty or twenty-one. Peter Wimsey was twenty-four when Childermass brought Bunter to him at Caudry.↩

4. Childermass seemed to be of the opinion that that it was no small bargain to trade the good will of a pleasant young lady for the notice of the Raven King.↩

5. Translated from the French: “This woman will be a staff for you to lean upon.” Letter from Paul Delgardie to Lord Peter Wimsey, 1935.↩

6. _A Child's History of the Raven King_ by John Waterbury, Lord Portishead (Longman: London, 1807)↩

7. Lady Susanna Clarke Wimsey, married to a younger brother of an earlier Duke in 1806 and herself of only modest fortune, was nevertheless known to be both fashionable and amiable. While she rarely attended parties, she was for ever being invited to them, being much prized for a wit that was above all humane, adding levity and interest to any gathering without wounding any one’s feelings. It was believed that she had written a well-received but still controversial novel under an alias, but evidence of this fact has never been discovered.↩

8. Gregory Absalom (1507-99), cousin of the eighth Duke of Denver, and noted Silver Age court magician to King Henry VIII and Queens Mary and Elizabeth. He was born in poverty and made his fortune as a magician, even though he was never known to cast a single working spell, until he built the Shadow House,where he produced both _The Tree of Learning_ and his daughter, Maria Absalom, thought to be among the last and greatest of the _Argentines_. As the Shadow House had not ever existed in Harriet’s England, Gregory chose to haunt his descendant’s library, which after all contained this world’s only extant copy of his most important book.↩

9. Years later, she would decide that on the whole, she was glad he _hadn’t_ come to bring her to his kingdom after all, having read an account of Arabella Strange’s time in faerie ably documented in Afrai’s monograph [The Blest Surprize](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/15/theblest.html).↩

10. “You will be the angel of England, and your flaming sword shall keep the world at bay.”↩

11. This precaution was due, we must assume, to sharing a house with her father and an elder sister, both of whom were very much against the match, and egregiously nosy besides.↩

12. These included [a witty interpretation of the Brontë sisters](http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202) and [a rather extraordinary revisit of the works of Jane Austen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/71046/chapters/94080).↩

13. Harriet would later find herself captivated by [the solemn account of a rabbit who made her way to the god Frith](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/55/brightmoon.html) on behalf of her lost children.↩

14. See _Notes on the Collecting of Incunabula_ , Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, Oxford Press. Lord Peter’s pre-Hurtfew library included a noted collection of early editions of Dante, including an Aldine edition of _The Divine Comedy_ , a letter from John Donne to Count Palatine Peter, and a copy of Watershippe’s _Death's Library_ (1448), an edition that had been re-bound in the early 1820’s, with pages from the only issue of _The Famulus_ used as binding lining. See also: incunabula; 1. any book printed before 1500; 2. the infancy or earliest stages of something; beginnings [from Latin, originally: swaddling clothes, hence beginnings, from in-2 + cūnābula cradle]; Incunabulum: Book printed before 1501. The date, though convenient, is arbitrary and unconnected to any development in the printing art. The term was probably first applied to early printing in general c. 1650. The total number of editions produced by 15th-century European presses is generally estimated at above 35,000, excluding ephemeral literature (e.g., single sheets, ballads, and devotional tracts) that is now lost or exists only in fragments in places such as binding linings. First Known Use: 1849.↩

15. Lord Peter and a collection of his ancestors possessed a singular knack for discovering books in the thin places where worlds overlapped with others much like them. Therefore there were in Lord Peter’s personal collection several curiosities, including a delicate and ancient set of scrolls reporting a remarkable and entirely new pantheon, neither Greek nor Roman, centered around the actions of a proud, reckless and accomplished [god of thieves](http://archiveofourown.org/works/586860) and his wise and rather long-suffering sister, the queen above all other gods save her mother, The Earth and her father, The Sky. There was even a set of clay tablets that would have baffled, scandalized and delighted any number of scholars, containing [a moving passage describing Gilgamesh and his grief for Enkidu](http://archiveofourown.org/works/16495), whom he had loved like a wife.↩

16. Peter’s first meeting with Belle da Costa Greene is chronicled in Pendrecarc’s [The Affair of the Blanched Bibliomane](http://archiveofourown.org/works/601118). It is unsurprising that Lord Peter would ask her to serve as his agent in the Americas, and to secure Bunter’s assistance in such transcontinental correspondence as could be expected between an adventurous, witty woman of independent means and a handsome, unattached gentleman of perfect discretion.↩

17. This letter would become a sort of charter for this new school of female magicians, although it was of course written and re-written with input from every member of this society before it was properly ratified. Peter took to calling it the Carta Dominarum.↩

18. “This world is all too shallow/it is painted on the sky/and it trembles like the wind-shook rain/when the Raven King goes by.” In later days, having learned more of the Raven King, Bunter would reflect upon the unusual choice of his Lordship’s use of French as the vessel of his supplication to so English a king. It would also seem that it was the first spell Peter Wimsey had ever managed to cast – he once said that magic was for him three parts Herculean effort and one part serendipity, that serendipity being personified in his wife. Although much acclaimed for his part in restoring (or perhaps more accurately, to our minds, _establishing_ ) English Magic, he was an otherwise workmanlike magician, while Harriet Vane was considered “the brightest practical witch of her age” in many effusive magazines and “the head of a fearful female Hydra” in a notably alarmist newspaper. Bunter himself had always had some of what he himself termed “negligible ability” and which Peter called “marvelous talent”.↩

19. Bunter came to Lord Peter shortly after Armistice Day in 1919 with little more than the clothes upon his back and the crystal decanter given to him by Childermass, having seen the marriage announcement of The Duke of Denver to Lady Helen, and noting that the family coat of arms (Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat crouched as to spring, proper; motto: As my Whimsy takes me) had been carelessly substituted with that of the Raven King: the Raven-in-Flight (properly called the Raven Volant), black against a field of white. The printer had no explanation for this accident, as it was not the symbol of any recognized family in the peerage on record, but sent the Duke a very mollifying letter of apology several pages long.↩

**Author's Note:**

> Many kind thanks to magnificent Kelly, the illustrious McSwain! and the astonishing belmanoir for the beta. If this story does not serve, it is on my own head. Happy first Yuletide, cantstoptemplarswillgetme! Your requests were inspiring, and I hope this hits the right notes!


End file.
